The present invention relates to a vehicle side mirror mounted on each of both sides of a vehicle to be used when a driver checks behind the vehicle.
A vehicle side mirror is mounted on each of both sides of a vehicle to be used when a driver checks behind the vehicle. There is a type of the vehicle side mirrors in which a cover member is attached to a housing, which is mounted on the vehicle and holds the mirror. An outer shape of this type of the vehicle side mirrors is formed integrally by the cover member and the housing. In this type of the vehicle side mirrors, a housing-side-facing surface edge portion of a housing-side facing surface on a side to which the cover member is attached, of the housing, and a cover-side facing-surface edge portion of a cover-side facing surface, on a side which is attached to the housing, of the cover member are shaped to be matched with each other. When the cover member is attached to the housing in such a manner that the housing-side facing-surface edge portion and the cover-side facing-surface edge portion are brought into contact with each other while coinciding with each other, the housing and the cover member are smoothly continued with each other at a boundary between the housing-side facing-surface edge portion and the cover-side facing-surface edge portion so as to form an integral outer shape by the housing and the cover member.
In the above-mentioned type of the vehicle side mirrors, it is sometimes required to form vehicle side mirrors with multiple specifications having partially different structures but maintaining an entirely uniform outer shape being set for the same vehicle model. Examples of such multiple specifications set for a vehicle side mirror for the same vehicle model include a specification having an auxiliary warning light such as a turn signal lamp, and a specification having no auxiliary warning light. In order to correspond to such multiple specifications, for example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-196298 proposes the following vehicle side mirror. Specifically, two types of cover members are formed for the same housing: a first cover member provided with an installation part for an auxiliary warning light; and a second cover member provided with no installation part therefor, each of which cover members is appropriately attachable to the housing while having a cover-side facing-surface edge portion matched with a housing-side facing-surface edge portion of the housing. The first cover member or the second cover member is appropriately selected and attached to the housing. In this way, two types of vehicle side mirrors for two different specifications are separately formed as appropriately. This makes it possible to easily form, while suppressing the manufacturing costs, vehicle side mirrors of different specifications having an entirely uniform outer shape matching the same vehicle model, that is, the specification provided with an auxiliary warning light and the specification provided with no auxiliary warning light.
However, in the aforementioned vehicle side mirror, since any one of the first cover member and the second cover member is attachable to the same type of housing, the following risk may arise. Specifically, the cover member having a specification different from a desired specification may be attached to the housing, in other words in the aforementioned example, the first cover member or the second cover member is selected wrongly, so that a vehicle side mirror having a specification (combination) different from a desired specification is formed. This risk is increased in a case where a uniformed basic color is used for the housing while the cover member is made to be matched with a vehicle color, and plural types of cover members are prepared whose difference lies in only the color for different specifications. This is because that there is no difference in process, such as whether or not wiring for an auxiliary warning light exists, as in the case of the presence or absence of the auxiliary warning light, in the operation of attaching each cover member.